Everyone Can Build It – Who Can Sell It?

So here’s the punchline: if everyone can build it, building it doesn’t matter anymore.

That’s a little unfair – of course execution still matters. But the real question for startups in 2025 isn’t “Can you build it?” It’s “Can you get anyone to care?” And that’s why distribution – the overlooked, unsexy, PowerPoint slide 19 of startup decks – has become the determining factor of success.

AI Has Leveled the Product Playing Field

Let’s start with the obvious: AI is not coming for the job of product development. It’s already there, feet on the desk, asking for stock options. Non-technical founders now build MVPs in a weekend. Designers now automate entire visual systems. Frontend devs might not even open VS Code. Which means:

• Technical and design moats are shrinking

• MVPs aren’t special anymore – they’re expected

• “It works” is no longer a differentiator

The startup graveyard isn’t filled with broken products. It’s filled with good ones that no one discovered. That’s been true for years, but the acceleration of generative tools has only widened the chasm between “I built this” and “People actually use this.”

So What Still Matters? Getting Users.

Enter: distribution.

Distribution is the art of getting your product into users' hands, minds, and group chats. It’s not just performance marketing or throwing up a landing page. It’s:

• Picking the right channels before you build

• Exploiting asymmetric access to platforms

• Finding wedge markets, network effects, or viral loops

• And above all: making your product discoverable and indispensable

And in a world where every founder can generate a product, but few can generate attention, this becomes your real moat.

Consider the Canon: Distribution-First Winners

Let’s play a quick round of “Why did they win?”

• PayPal didn’t invent digital wallets. But they embedded inside eBay auctions. Distribution hack.

• Zynga wasn’t the best game studio. But they rode Facebook’s feed. Distribution hack.

• Pinduoduo didn’t invent fruit delivery. But they turned WeChat group chats into order funnels. Distribution hack.

• Calendly didn’t invent scheduling. But they put links in email signatures before you asked for them. Distribution hack.

None of these companies won because they had the most elegant product. They won because they figured out distribution early and fast. In fact, many of them started by piggybacking on platforms with embedded user networks – eBay, Facebook, WeChat, email – before gradually building independence.

The New Stack: Distribution-Led Thinking

There’s a quiet shift happening in how startups form. Traditionally, it went:

1. Have idea

2. Build product

3. Market product

4. Scale

Today’s version looks more like:

1. Identify a distribution advantage

2. Find the people already gathered somewhere

3. Slot a product into that ecosystem

4. Build fast (AI helps!)

5. Scale once the channel proves out

In other words: invert the process. Start with the audience, then deliver the value.
A startup might say: “We noticed that teachers across hundreds of Facebook Groups were sharing Canva templates for classroom use. So we built a lightweight lesson-planning tool that plugs into Google Classroom and lets them remix and share visual aids directly from those same templates.” Boom – instant user base to test on. That is distribution-led thinking.

So What Should Founders Actually Do?

If you’re founding a startup in the age of AI, your checklist needs an upgrade. Don’t just chase technical feasibility. Chase distribution leverage.
Here’s how to think about it:

• 🧭 Find your platform: Is it TikTok, Discord, Shopify, Amazon, YouTube? Where are the people already gathering?

• 📦 Bundle or piggyback: Can your product ride inside something else? Like how Superhuman used Gmail's familiarity.

• 💬 Create content before product: Audience-first startups (like Not Boring or Lenny’s Newsletter) often build after their distribution exists.

• 🧪 Test with incentives: Referral hacks still work. So do community incentives. Build growth into the product DNA.

The Bottom Line

If AI is democratizing creation, then distribution is the new frontier of competition.
The winners of this era won’t necessarily have the smartest devs or the flashiest pitch decks. They’ll be the ones who figure out how to:

• get attention without breaking the bank

• hack user acquisition without buying every click

• and scale demand before they scale infrastructure

Because in 2025, building is free. But distribution? Distribution is everything.